Description

In this rare 1924 recording James Joyce reads from the Aeolus episode of his masterpiece Ulysses The recording was arranged and financed by the authors friend and publisher Sylvia Beach who brought him by taxi to the HMV His Masters Voice gramophone studio in the Paris suburb of Billancourt The first session didnt go well Joyce was nervous and suffering from his recurring eye troubles He and Beach returned another day to finish the recording In her memoir Shakespeare amp Company Beach writes Joyce had chosen the speech in the Aeolus episode the only passage that could be lifted out of Ulysses he said and the only one that was declamatory and therefore suitable for recital He had made up his mind he told me that this would be his only reading from Ulysses Ihave an idea that it was not for declamatory reasons alone that he chose this passage from Aeolus I believe that it expressed something he wanted said and preserved in his own voice As it rings outhe lifted his voice above it boldlyit is more one feels than mere oratory The passage parallels the episode in Homers Odyssey featuring Aeolus god of the winds As a pun Joyce sets it in a newspaper office where his hero Leopold Bloom stops by to place an ad only to be stymied by the blustery noise of the printing presses and of the various windbags in the office One character tries to entertain a couple of his friends with a mocking recital of a politicians speech printed in the days newspaper Here is the passage Joyce reads
He began
Mr Chairman ladies and gentlemen Great was my admiration in listening to the remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland a moment since by my learned friend It seemed to me that I had been transported into a country far away from this country into an age remote from this age that I stood in ancient Egypt and that I was listening to the speech of a highpriest of that land addressed to the youthful Moses
His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear their smoke ascending in frail stalks that flowered with his speechNoble words coming Look out Could you try your hand at it yourself
And it seemed to me that I heard the voice of that Egyptian highpriest raised in a tone of like haughiness and like pride I heard his words and their meaning was revealed to me
From the Fathers
It was revealed to me that those things are good which yet are corrupted which neither if they were supremely good nor unless they were good could be corrupted Ah curse you Thats saint Augustine
Why will you jews not accept our language our religion and our culture You are a tribe of nomad herdsmen we are a mighty people You have no cities nor no wealth our cities are hives of humanity and our galleys trireme and quadrireme laden with all manner merchandise furrow the waters of the known globe You have but emerged from primitive conditions we have a literature a priesthood an agelong history and a polity
Nile
Child man effigy
By the Nilebank the babemaries kneel cradle of bulrushes a man supple in combat stonehorned stonebearded heart of stone
You pray to a local and obscure idol our temples majestic and mysterious are the abodes of Isis and Osiris of Horus and Ammon Ra Yours serfdom awe and humbleness ours thunder and the seas Israel is weak and few are her children Egypt is an host and terrible are her arms Vagrants and daylabourers are you called the world trembles at our name
A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech he lifted his voice above it boldly
But ladies and gentlemen had the youthful Moses listened to and accepted that view of life had he bowed his head and bowed his will and bowed his spirit before that arrogant admonition he would never have led the chosen people out of their house of bondage nor followed the pillar of the cloud by day He would never have spoken with the Eteral amid lightnings on Sinais mountaintop nor even have come down with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in his arms the tables of the law graven in the language of the outlaw